Maxwell’s Match

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Sugar?’

  ‘One. Thanks. Ah,’ his eyes lighted on a poetry book on the Head of House’s shelves. ‘Up the Line to Death. Edward Thomas lived near here, didn’t he?’

  ‘Over at Steep, yes. Are you English Lit., Max?’

  ‘No. God, no. History. English is my subsid, but I’ve never taught it for real. What was Bill?’

  ‘Classics.’

  ‘Ah,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Now that really is the Great Divide between us, isn’t it? Thanks.’ He took the proffered cup.

  ‘Not done at … er … Leighford?’

  Maxwell shook his head. ‘Although I do have several kids to whom every subject is Greek.’

  ‘Mind you, it’s dying here,’ Maggie Shaunessy said and instantly regretted it. ‘God, this is so difficult.’

  ‘Soldiers,’ Maxwell changed the subject. ‘You have a Cadet Force?’

  ‘Army, yes. It used to be combined, I believe, but that was before my time. Those things depend of staffing, don’t they?’

  ‘Indeed. Who runs that?’

  ‘David Gallow, Head of History. He’s a Captain or something in the T.A. I’m afraid, coming from a girls’ school, I don’t know much about it. Coffee not too awful?’

  ‘The coffee’s fine,’ Maxwell smiled.

  There was a knock at the study door and the lovely girl popped her head around it.

  ‘Cassandra?’ Maggie Shaunessy was arranging herself on the chair opposite Maxwell’s.

  ‘Sorry to bother you, Miss, but Dr Sheffield would like to see Mr Maxwell. Now.’

  ‘Oh?’ the Head of House frowned. ‘But …’

  ‘No, no,’ Maxwell was on his feet. ‘His Master’s Voice,’ he swigged what was left in the cup. ‘Thanks … Maggie. Perhaps we can talk again.’

  ‘I’d like that. Cassandra, take Mr Maxwell across, will you?’

  He walked with the girl down the open staircase and out into the day. They passed the limes and made for the main buildings, old Jedediah’s house.

  ‘Cassandra,’ he said. ‘Old Priam’s daughter.’

  ‘Sir?’ the girl arched an eyebrow, looking him up and down with vague disgust.

  ‘In Greek mythology,’ Maxwell explained. ‘Cassandra was the daughter of the Trojan king. The God Apollo was transfixed by her beauty and gave her the gift of prophecy.’

  ‘I was actually named after the Gulf of Cassandra,’ she told him flatly, ‘in Southern Greece. Where, apparently, I was conceived. That’s fairly typical of my mother, to remember where, but not necessarily with whom.’ They had reached the Headmaster’s door and Cassandra rapped on it. ‘You have a nice day, Mr Maxwell.’ And she was gone, her school skirt swinging to the sway of her hips.

  ‘Agamemnon’s plaything,’ Maxwell was talking to himself now in the corridor at the end of the world.

  ‘Ah, Maxwell.’ The Headmaster had dropped the ‘Mr’ in the space of twenty-four hours. Maxwell had been to a school like this; he wasn’t surprised. Surnames were de rigeur – that and silly, politically incorrect sobriquets. He stood in the opulence of Sheffield’s study and wasn’t asked to sit down.

  ‘Leave?’ Maxwell repeated. ‘That’s a shame, sir.’

  ‘Yes, well, there it is. No one’s going to be themselves for a while, not really.’

  ‘All the more reason for me to stay,’ Maxwell told him.

  Sheffield looked up at his man. There was a steel about Maxwell he hadn’t noticed before, an inner strength.

  ‘I could tell you to go,’ Sheffield reminded him.

  ‘You could,’ Maxwell nodded slowly. ‘But I don’t think that’s the Grimond’s way, is it?’

  ‘Er …’ Sheffield was rather flustered. One of his housemasters was dead. There were policemen in the quads, paparazzi at the gates in ever increasing numbers, nosing, poking about, photographing. And a stubborn stranger staring back at him across his own carpet. George Sheffield’s world was becoming decidedly pear-shaped.

  5

  The whispers began that afternoon, shortly after Mrs Oakes had done everybody proud with her baked cod. Maxwell tried to catch them as he wandered the library, drooling at the array of A-level texts for which he himself, given another throw of the psychopathological dice, might have killed Bill Pardoe.

  ‘They say he was pushed,’ was the sage comment of a Lower Fifth kid out of the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Sheffield did it,’ his ginger oppo told a little huddle who were supposed to be researching land forms for Geography.

  ‘They never got on,’ a fat girl from Austen House confided, but what did she know, the lads silently asked themselves.

  ‘I heard it was Tubbsy.’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘He wouldn’t have the nerve.’

  ‘There’s only one of ’em in the clear,’ the ginger nut participated. ‘Mr Graham. He was the only one not here.’

  ‘What about … him?’ the fat girl’s breasts were oozing out over the table as she leaned low to Whisper. Her thumb shot out in Maxwell’s direction.

  ‘Who the fuck is he?’ the sage hissed. And the question had barely left his lips when Maxwell was hovering over them all.

  ‘I’m your worst night mare,’ he smiled. ‘A teacher with twenty-twenty hearing and eyes in my arse. Does that answer your question, young man?’

  And suddenly, for the whole table, Geography landforms, open on their books before them, had never seemed so fascinating.

  At Grimond’s front gates, between the pillars with their stone gargoyle lions, the Horatius that was George Sheffield stood squarely in front of the invading hordes that were the Fourth Estate To his right, Mervyn Larson, his Deputy, stood like Herminius. And to his left, the Lartius of the Grimond three was Anthony Graham, hot foot from Leighford to the sunny south-east. He had taken his leave of Sylvia over a grabbed breakfast, dashed in to Legs Diamond’s office as a courtesy and had driven north-west.

  ‘I’m sorry, gentlemen,’ Sheffield raised both hands for quiet. All three had left their gowns on their hooks, lest they inflamed the more Leftie tabloids, their politics bristling with envy. All would have been well for the Mail and the Telegraph, but the Guardian was there and the Independent. Readers of the Sun and the Mirror would have assumed they were wearing fancy dress. The blokes from the Daily Sport were skirting the hedge, trying to get photos of the girlies in a netball match.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I have no intention of letting you in,’ the Headmaster was saying. ‘There are over five hundred children in this school and they are all in my care.’

  ‘What about the dead man, Dr Sheffield?’ a journalist asked between the popping of the camera flashes.

  ‘I have been instructed by the police to say nothing to you,’ the Headmaster went on, clearly irritated by the lights and the booms pushed under his nose.

  ‘Is Superintendent Mason calling a press conference?’ another asked.

  ‘I have no idea. This whole thing is a tragic accident. Can we please leave it at that?’

  He turned away from another barrage of questions, then turned back. ‘Just one thing more,’ he bellowed, the veins in his neck standing out. ‘I will not tolerate any of my staff or my pupils being pestered by you people. Rest assured, I shall be straight on to the Press Complaints Commission the instant I get wind of anything like that.’

  And he marched off, leaving Larson and Graham to swing the iron gates to and lock them.

  ‘How do they find out about these things, Mervyn?’ a bewildered Sheffield asked his Number Two as the man joined him, their feet crunching in time on the gravel.

  ‘Blood.’ From nowhere, Peter Maxwell was with them. No one had seen him striding out across the Grimond grass. ‘They smell it, like sharks in the water. Hello, Tony.’ He nodded at Graham.

  ‘Have you some experience of this sort of thing, Maxwell?’ Sheffield asked.

  ‘Some,’ Maxwell nodded, tilting back his tweed hat. ‘Who’s your newest recruit?’

  ‘Staffwise?’ Sheffie
ld pondered. ‘Tim Robinson. Games and Physical Education. Been with us since the start of term.’

  ‘That’s who they’ll go for.’

  ‘Mr Maxwell,’ Larson smiled, unconvinced ‘You sound like an old pro.’ The Deputy Head master had met the Head of Sixth briefly at lunch the previous day. He was a tall man with chiselled features and iron grey hair, immaculately groomed.

  ‘Earning my last five bob,’ Maxwell winked at him. ‘Trust me, gentlemen.’ He turned to face them where the Science Block arched to the south. ‘I’ve been in your position before. One o my sixth form was killed, some years back. A least,’ he pointed to the gate, ‘you’ve got some sort of security here. Our site is wide open.’

  ‘But that’s trespass, surely,’ Graham said, ‘if one of them comes onto Grimond’s property.’

  ‘This isn’t the Dark Ages, Tony,’ Maxwell growled. ‘What are you going to do? Set the dog on them? The man-traps? They’ll have every excuse under the sun for being somewhere they shouldn’t. And if they can’t wriggle out, they’ll just stump up whatever fine the law throws at them. They can afford it, all of them. Christ, the sons of the heir to the throne can’t get any privacy. What chance do you think you stand?’

  ‘What’s your advice?’ Sheffield asked, hating himself for doing it.

  ‘Talk to your new man – Robinson? Make sure he’s sound. Send out a letter to parents, day kids and boarders. Explain the reason for “softly softly”. Work with Hall.’

  ‘I wanted to ask you about that,’ Sheffield said waiting until a brace of children had passed, saluting them with a frosty ‘Good afternoon, whoever you are. How do you know him?’

  Maxwell chuckled. ‘We’re old sparring partners,’ he said. ‘He’s almost as cuddly as a barracuda – no station hugs for him. But he’s shrewd as all get out and I’d go to the wire with him.’ He looked at their faces. ‘Sorry,’ he smiled. ‘A few too many clichés there, I’m afraid. I watch a lot of television.’

  Sheffield closed to Maxwell. ‘Can you talk to him?’ he asked. ‘I want the lid kept on this. And if you know the man …’

  Maxwell raised his hands. ‘I’m not sure that would work,’ he said.

  ‘Mr Maxwell,’ politeness had returned. ‘An hour ago I was all set to kick you off the premises. Now, well … I may have been hasty. I’d like you to stay and I’d like you to work with Inspector Hall. Please?’

  Maxwell looked at his man. George Sheffield had aged a thousand years in the last day and the straw he was clutching at was a crusty old Head of Sixth Form from Dropout Comprehensive. ‘I’ll give it a whirl, Headmaster,’ he smiled.

  ‘Thank you,’ Sheffield shook his hand warmly. ‘Mervyn, get hold of Robinson, will you?’ He patted his Deputy’s arm. ‘Word to the wise and so on. Now, Tony,’ he put his arm around Graham’s shoulder, ‘about running Tennyson …’

  Incident Rooms are the same the world over. It doesn’t matter whose patch they’re on; whether they’re in a state of the art nick or a village hall. This one was a village hall, in the heart of Selborne, with the dark-treed Hanger rising above it The Ladies’ Bridge Club had put in an official complaint to the Chief Constable and the Ladies’ Aerobics Group (virtually the same ladies, in fact) had done a runner at the arrival of the fuzz. Only their Treasurer, a feisty old biddy addicted to re-runs of the Golden Girls, had stood her ground spitting blood in the face of a rather bemused sergeant about how she paid his inflated salary. It was just the pique of someone tragically losing life’s eternal battle against cellulite.

  The phone points moved in, the electricians and the computers. There were more miles of cable than crossed the Atlantic on a daily basis. And of course, it was raining. Henry Hall’s anonymous specs were beaded with water as he ducked in under the Gothic porchway some Victoria Selbornians had lovingly arched over the door, providing a reading room all those years ago for the natives of Gilbert White’s village.

  ‘Here,’ he pointed to the corner of the ante room where he wanted his desk and a pair of long-suffering constables gratefully deposited the load. ‘Afternoon, Mark.’

  DCI West had arrived, unannounced, his hair plastered to his forehead and his raincoat steaming. ‘Settling in all right, Henry?’

  ‘It’s early days, as you see.’

  West did. It irked him all the same, that it was his officers bustling hither and yon, at the diktat of an outsider. His smile was pure cyanide. ‘The Chief Super asked me to look in.’

  ‘He did?’ Hall had wiped his glasses now and hi eyes behind them had resumed their lifelessness.

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’ West was mechanically taking stock, watching the whirl of activity around him. ‘Not like that, Carter, you’ll rupture yourself. Any chance of a coffee, Lynda?’

  ‘Er … Mark,’ Hall clicked open the side door. ‘A word?’

  West followed his Sussex counterpart into the Inner Sanctum, where another desk, chair and computer were already set up. ‘The Chief Super didn’t send you, did he?’ He looked his man squarely in the face.

  West’s jaw flexed, then he relaxed and smiled. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s a fair cop. Look, you know how it is. My patch and all. You’ll be the same when I return the compliment.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You know,’ West was still smiling. ‘When I come to your manor. Any date fixed for that, yet?’

  Hall shook his head. ‘I haven’t heard,’ he said. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, Mark.’ He checked his watch.

  ‘Yes,’ West sighed. ‘Of course. I’ve got a bank |ob in Petworth to sort out. You wouldn’t credit what goes on behind locked doors in these sleepy little towns, eh? Well, keep in touch.’ And he swept out, slamming the door just a little hard for Hall’s liking and whisking a WPC away by the elbow as he made for the door. Hall let him go and gave his new team ten minutes. Then he called them to order.

  ‘For those of you who don’t know me,’ he said, hands on hips to show off his three-piece, ‘I’m DCI Hall, out of Leighford, West Sussex. I’m here because of politics – inter-force co-operation between top brass.’ He raked them all with those unfathomable eyes, knowing the reaction of hardnosed coppers to the very word ‘brass’. ‘I know there are those of you who would prefer to work with DCI West.’ There was the odd shuffle and flicker of eyeballs. ‘Well, that’s understandable. But there’s a man dead at Grimond’s school and until I decide otherwise, we’re treating the death as suspicious and you will take orders from me. Is that understood?’

  There were murmurs and the odd, scraping cough.

  ‘Half an hour,’ he said. ‘Then I want everybody back here in full reporting mode. Got it?’

  More murmurs.

  ‘Lynda?’ He caught the eye of the pretty; dumpy WPC in the corner.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Any chance of a coffee?’

  Henry Hall’s new team didn’t know much. William Francis Pardoe was fifty-one years old when he went off the Grimond’s roof. He’d been educated at Charterhouse and Merton College Oxford. After a brief spell in insurance, he’d gone into teaching, a state school somewhere in the North East. He’d joined Grimond’s twenty-on years ago, as Assistant Classics teacher. He’d taken over Tennyson House eight years later. Nothing was known of his private life. The team had drawn a blank there. Henry Hall thanked them and told them all to carry on. He didn’t like brick walls and dead ends; and that, in the life of Bill Pardoe, seemed to be all there was. If he killed himself, why? If someone else had done it, who?’

  As another spring dusk descended on sleepy Selborne, the Chief Inspector hung his jacket over the back of his chair and looked at the objects on his desk, lit with the radiance of his lamp. They were all the worldly goods of William Francis Pardoe, apart from the books that still lined his study at Grimond’s. There was a Swiss Army knife, a glass paperweight with swirling bubbles, a letter opener and a pipe with a worn, gnawed stem.

  ‘No tobacco pouch, Mr Pardoe?’ Hall murmured to himself. ‘Where’s that,
I wonder? And who …’ Hall picked up the handsome silver- mounted photograph of a pretty blond boy, ‘… is this?’

  The boy was sitting cross-legged on what appeared to be a tree stump. An alert-looking Border Collie sat with him.

  He clicked the intercom. ‘Lynda. Get me Leighford nick, will you. DS Jacquie Carpenter. I’ll wait.’

  Michael Helmseley served a mean brandy. Mean in the sense that Peter Maxwell could barely see the film of it covering the bottom of the glass. Clearly, ‘three fingers’ was a measurement lost on the head of Classics. He was a large man in a shapeless grey suit that looked like an old one of Patrick Moore’s. His glasses were thick and he had the smallest mouth Maxwell had ever seen on a grown man.

  ‘Domineering wives,’ he murmured. ‘That’s what that lot need.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Maxwell was relaxing in the lamp-lit corner of the Senior Common room, which the historian in him knew had been old Jedediah’s master bedroom. Helmseley was lounging in what was clearly ‘his’ chair and probably had been since St Patrick had kicked all the snakes out of Ireland.

  ‘Those arrogant buggers in Upper Five Bee. You know the sort, Maxwell, I’m sure; think they know it all because they learn a bit of Caesar. Caesar!’ he downed his brandy. ‘It’s like reading Noddy Goes To The Toilet. You don’t have Latin, I suppose, where you are?’

  ‘No,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘When I first joined there was an elder statesman on the staff who hand-picked the Oxbridge types and took them through a bit of Virgil, I believe.’ Maxwell smiled to himself. That was a long time ago and he was that elder statesman now.

  ‘Even here, of course,’ Helmseley ruminated, ‘it’s all watered down. Classical civilization. The language and literature element is only a minor part. Might as well pass it all over to Gallow’s department. You’re an historian, aren’t you?’

  ‘So rumour has it,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Tell me, Michael, how are you going to manage without Bill Pardoe?’

  ‘Lord knows,’ Helmseley sighed. He was leaning back in the huge, leather armchair, his hands clasped across his chest, the brandy balloon stem cradled between his fingers. ‘I expect George will place an advertisement after a suitable period. What possessed him?’ He was shaking his head.